​Economica: How the way options are presented affect consumer choice

Wharton’s Cassie Mogilner, Stanford’s Baba Shiv, and Columbia’s Sheena Iyengar decided to find out how the way options were presented to consumers affected the feelings they ultimately had about a particular choice

Are you a one stop shopper or one who scrounges the shops at the Mall multiple times before picking up that pair of shoe laces? Well, three professors, Wharton's Cassie Mogilner, Stanford's Baba Shiv, and Columbia's Sheena Iyengar decided to find out how the way options were presented to consumers affected the feelings they ultimately had about a particular choice. Their findings are outlined in the paper,"Eternal Quest for the Best: Sequential (vs. Simultaneous) Option Presentation Undermines Choice Commitment," which appeared in the Journal of Consumer Research. They conclude that individuals presented with options one at a time end up less satisfied with, and ultimately less committed to, their chosen option than individuals presented with their options all at once. And why did the sequential choosers experience those outcomes as being less desirable? Well, because their mind stayed focused on "the road not taken," or the option that remained undiscovered.